The tired you can't explain

nathanielfishel.substack.com

7 points·bigfish2026··7 comments

So I like the work on this article to deep dive into some of the phenomena but it doesn't really give a way to cope with the exhaustion. I think knowing that would be more helpful so that the load of the career doesn't cause burnout.

I’m planning on publishing more as I find real strategies. But honestly I didn’t want to be disingenuous and include anything I have not found to help. I’m really still dealing with these problems myself.

I appreciate that you want to see if the techniques work before you promote those. I know many would just push a technique to get folks to buy something without actually testing it themselves.

Re the part about the brain associating how you feel at the moment / how you think you are performing with how you judge yourself as a person: I recommend reading Steve Hayes work / ACT therapy including this video for acute distress episodes https://youtu.be/GnSHpBRLJrQ . TLDR is learning ways to keep your thoughts and feelings separate from your sense of self.

A lot of software engineering work is meaningless and you know it. It’s working in a team at the speed of the slowest member to duplicate some trivial cross-functional layer that’s already been solved thousands of times, it’s telling yourself this is job security until the company notices there’s two people getting paid for every one person’s work, it’s wondering why you have to look at another screen to read about another screen to turn back to another screen.

Inside a big company for sure. Less so at a startup.

Sounds like you need to switch jobs.

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